How to Keep Attendees Engaged Long After the Meeting Ends

Picture this common scenario: after months of planning, your company’s event is underway. Guests are happy, excited, and re-energized through the meeting. Ideas are flowing and engagement is at an all time high for your company. At the meeting’s conclusion, everyone packs up and travels home. The next day, they are busy catching up on the 500-plus emails in their inbox. By Monday, the company event is a distant memory. Other than an occasional #tbt post on Instagram, the event is rarely mentioned among your team members. In short – no one stayed engaged!

On average, an attendee stays engaged in a meeting’s objective for two days after the event concludes. In the meetings industry, engagement is the currency by which we measure our success. If guests keep engaged, then the planners did their job to its fullest extent. The problem is that life gets in the way.

With decades of experience on finding new ways to combat this engagement fatigue, PRA shares new and exciting ways to keep guests captivated in your meeting’s message to help keep the momentum going.

How to Keep Attendees Engaged Post-Meeting

Keep posting long after the meeting is over. Whether it be on Social Media or through an internal mechanism, keep your interactions top of mind to keep those meetings and objectives fresh for attendees.

Provide meaningful surveys. Yes, asking if the attendees enjoyed themselves is important, but make sure there are equally important questions on the quality of the content and how you can improve each year. Give your guests a moment to reflect and they’ll be sure to stay engaged.

Bring back a personal touch. As planners, our attendees are our clients. Write Thank-You notes, personalized emails, or even mail a few photos from your photo booth to your offices to remind them of all the fun–and education–they had during the program.

Podcasts – Recordings are a tried and true medium to get information out in digestible, truncated bits that can be shared internally. Make it memorable with case studies, side notes, and anecdotes from the meetings to keep people interested while they listen on their drive to work.

Show your impact. If you had a CSR component to your event, have a follow-up piece go out a few months after your event of how your goodwill helped those in need.

Ask for post-communication participation – Whether it be an attendee writing a blog post or cultivating a few noteworthy quotes for a press release, have your team engage with the audience to make their impact reach a wider audience.

Tailor internal communications to common themes for the meeting. Was your program Western themed? Maybe your newsletter has a touch of cowhide to the design for a couple months. Attendees can recall information more readily with visual cues.

In the meetings world, our job doesn’t stop when the meeting ends. With these tips, make the most of your meeting for months to come. Reach out to PRA today to find out more tips and tricks from our seasoned professionals today.